Last minute signings: A number of players and owners were winners in the past 72 hours due to uncertainty of new CBA

THE BLUELINE REPORT Who’s at fault for the NHL lockout is a pointless discussion. Both sides deserve the same amount of blame for not finding any common ground on the core economic issues. Leading up to the lockout, though, a number of players and owners were winners in the past 72 to 48 hours as an interesting dynamic is how the uncertainty of the CBA led to so many long-term signings of restricted free agents and players with one year left on their contract in the final hours before the CBA expired on Sunday morning at 12:01 a.m. What we saw here was some teams getting good bargains on long-term deals for core players like in Washington with John Carlson

The Blueline Report on Sabres throwing big bucks around at wrong players again, Bruins, CBA & Taylor Hall

THE BLUELINE REPORT The revelation this week that the Buffalo Sabres are indeed the team that has offered Shane Doan a massive four year, $30 million contract is not a surprise at all to those following the situation closely, as it’s been widely believed for weeks that the Sabres were the team with the insane offer to the soon to be 36 year old. The offer was made in mid July, so it’s not like the offer is suddenly a game changer in the Doan situation but looking at the bigger picture, the ridiculous offer put forth by Sabres management is another example that having a rich owner in Terry Pegula who is willing to spend big bucks, doesn’t mean

The Blueline Report: $19 million salary cap gap between NHL and NHLPA proposal

As Don Fehr and Gary Bettman resume negotiations this week, the rhetoric between the two sides has been interesting but not surprising with Bettman touting the revenue sharing plans in the NFL and NBA, while Don Fehr has spoken pretty highly of baseball’s revenue sharing system as he has been touting baseball’s model quite frequently in the past week. Just how far apart are the two sides can be looked at the $19 million gap each proposal has for the salary capĀ in 2012-2013. Under the NHL’s proposal, the salary cap would drop to $50.8 million next season (Numbers via Canadian Press), and would be roughly $20 million less than the summer cap of $70.2 million, while the NHLPA’s proposal would